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Published: June 13th 2009
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no rush hour for this guy.
I don't normally photograph people, but he was looking the other way and I couldn't resist. People just sit and while away the hours in San Cristobal. In total Lynn did four weeks of Spanish classes at 'La Casa en el Arbol' but I just can't pick it up as fast as her so I'm doing five. Its time consuming and there isn't really time to fit much else in, so there's not really all that much to tell here. The days, particuarly my days, are more or less full with the lessons and then the homework. By the evenings all I feel like doing is staring at the TV, which is really just another type of Spanish lesson in itself because now I understand a little Spanish my eyes are drawn to the TV subtitles that I can't help trying to deciper whether I want to or not. Who could have guessed that using your brain cells could be so tiring? I must remember never to attempt anything like this level of intellectual effort ever again.
But at least now I'm fully fluent in Español, eerrr well......just so long as the Mexicans let me do the talking and don't interrupt. Or try to confuse things by replying in sentences crammed with verbs and nouns I've never heard before all vocalised within the time it takes to blink.
Lynn with our teachers, Gabriella and Minerva
I don't remember the schools of my youth having quite so many flowers. This is Lynn's final day, her teacher said she was at an advanced stage with the language, frigging smart ass! I do enjoy the lessons though, my teacher Minerva has been patient and lets me go at my own crushingly slow pace. Which is convienient because while trying to pick up this language 'crushingly slow' is the only pace I've got to offer.
Normally on Friday afternoons we forget about everything and go out for something to eat and drink at a tapas bar we've been frequenting. It's the bar I mentioned in my last blog where they serve up free tapas with every bottle or individual glass of wine you order. Sometimes one or more of the kids that sell stuff on the streets might be in there. I've seen the owner give them free drinks when they're thirsty. They're either hawking baskets of hand crafts all day, or wearing these wooden mobile shops on their chests the weight of which being supported by a neck strap. I imagine if your under ten years old that could be thirsty work. (They are working for their parents, grandparents or guardians, the logic being a child will obviously sell more than an adult because of the sympathy of tourists, and it works! We buy something we don't want every Friday.
I've bought enough miniture clay animals to start my own clay zoo. You can never get bored of collecting clay hand painted animals.
Looking on each Friday I can see that to this bar owner its clearly no big thing for him that he helps these kids in this small but important way. As he said to us "They are my amigos". But we think its gotta go down as impressive behaviour, he doesn't have to do it. So as well as being the owner of one of the most relaxed bars I've ever wasted away afternoons in he's also clearly one of the good guys.
One girl who's quite often there called Aña made a friend of Lynn and visa versa. The indiginous people here are naturally small, tiny even, and we gussed her age at being a skinny eight year old. It turns out she's only six, but with the eyes and a maturity way beyond her years. Although one day with Lynn she was playing at making paper hats and drawing and while doing that you could clearly see the six year old she actually is.
Like I said you get free food just for drinking in
this bar and there's often too much for us to eat, Spanish and Italian meats, tomato brushetta, olives and cheeses etc. Lynn had asked this girl Aña if she'd like to share some more than once but she was clearly not interested in the slightest. I found that quite perplexing until Lynn's Spanish teacher explained that a lot of the indiginous peoples don't have these foods in their diet. So next time we saw her Lynn asked her what food was it that she did like to eat? and she said in her squeaky voice "tortillas!" I like tortillas myself, which is lucky because you have to like them or at least grow to like them in Mexico as they are served with everything, but I don't fancy living on them.
Both me and Lynn have been ill with stomach problems. I'm not sure what Lynn ate that made her ill, but I know that it was a chicken that floored me. There is a shop with chickens revolving in a glass sided oven at the end of our road. The shop assistant ripped a bird off the spit for me wth all the grace of a miner at
Open house
A shrine to someones religious devotion they proudly show off to any passerby who cares to look into their living room. the coal face, cut it into crude chunks with what looked like garden pruners, then wrapped it in brown paper and pushed it across the counter to me like a pack of scraps for a hound. I got it home, it didn't smell like a roast chicken should. Even though it was out of the oven just five minutes it wasn't as hot as it should have been, it was tepid.
There was a similar shop round the corner from where we used to live in Chorlton that sold cheap packaged meat. On Saturdays they roasted chickens in a similar oven and the smell the roasting chickens made as you passed the shop wasn't exactly appealing, it was nauseous even. I remember once I even did a job for a butcher who bragged to me how he would reheat a chicken many times over in such an oven believing that the 400 degree heat would kill all bacteria, and if the odd customer got sick, so what.
During the ensuing four days that I was chained to the bathroom I had plenty of time to reflect on how, "if I wouldn't buy one of these stinking chickens in Manchester, why
the three stages of Jesus Christ
on the right baby Jesus on his father's shoulder, in the middle Infant Jesus in his Mother's arms, and far left and at the end of his career 'heavy metal Jesus' put a top hat on him ad it's Slash out of Guns and Roses the fuck would I think it was ok to eat one in Mexico?"
There was an earth tremor in San Cristobal a few days ago, it would prabably have been considered small by Mexican standards but it was the largest tremor I've experienced. The chair I was sat in at home was moving slightly and kitchen implements were swinging from side to side on the wall. I remembered the earthquake advice I read in a guide book that suggested in the event of an earthquake you say indoors and stand with your back to the wall of the building you're in. But I was fully focused on the kithchen implements swinging back and forth and thinking of TV footage of the Mexico City eathquake in the 1980's that killed thousands, and I realised that if the laddle on the wall started to swing any faster I'd be out the door.
Other than these things there's not so much to tell because we've not done much other than study. Athough something did make me laugh one day. There was a large green parrot in a cage near the bathrooms out the back of a cafe we sometimes went to,
Niños Heroes street (child heros)
With a long history of revolution in Mexico a lot of the streets are named after the dates of important battles. 5th of May St, 16th of September St, etc. I wonder what the 'Child Heros' did in on the day to warrant a street being named after them? and as I passed him on the way back from the toliet one day he sqwarked at me "No puedo volar!" in English.......( I can't fly!)
Next we go to Guatamala, to Lake Atitlan. Everyone tells us its supposed to be very beautiful and that Guatamala is cheaper even than Mexico. I've read that some of the towns on the lake are popular yoga and meditation type retreats. Which means they will be full of American and European 20 somethings pretending to be poor and searching for their inner selves before they head back home to become stock brokers or whatever.
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Tim Vaughan
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snow shaker
Loving the ceramic jesus collection - bring me back a Jesus snow shaker!